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Published: July 23rd 2008
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While we were out stuffing our faces with seafood the other night, we came across a big group of American doctors eating in the same restaurant. From eaves dropping on their conversation, we established that they were a Christan medical mission. Kit wanted to go and make friends. I was very much against this, due to my irrational phobia of evangelical chrstians. Yes, this is a little mean. But in my defense, I have never once been hassled by a Buddist, Hindu, Jewish or Muslim person, it´s just the christians that really seem to have it in for me. And they were from America too! That means they must be like those people in that Louis Theroux documentary who think you go to hell for drinking coffee.
Despite my resistance we ended up going to see them at the school where they were working the next day, because Lindsay (the daughter of our Spanish teachers) had a fever. They turned out to be the nicest people, making me feel like a total wanker for wanting to avoid them. When we told them we were med students from England they spent ages showing us everything they were doing, and promised to see Lindsey even though they had 40 people waiting and had stopped taking on new patients 3 hours ago.
They introduced us to the whole team and showed us the medical clinics, the pharmacy (several suitcases full of drugs they´d brought with them from America) and the dental clinic (a dirty classroom with no windows in which a jolly dentist was happily ripping out teeth). We met the mayor of Canoa who liked us cause we were English, and made us pose for photos. We made friends with two 19 year old spanish language collage students who´d given up their summers to get up at 5am and translate for the docs. Not once did anyone bring up the whole Jesus thing, or so much as insinuate that I´m going to go to hell.
It really showed us a new side to our lovely tropical paradise Canoa. We saw the maid who cleans our room, Alba, waiting with her 4 children. She can´t be any older than I am. One of the gynae docs told me they´d seen a 17 year old with 4 kids. The whole village had showed up, whether or not they were actually sick, to jump at the chance to see a doctor for free.
This experience left us struggling with a sudden, unexpected attack of guilt over the fact that we´d been spending our time drinking cocktails on the beach instead of tending to the parasitic infections of the poor. Especially as we had spent the previous night complaining bitterly about how medicine is ruining all our fun, plotting to sack it off and buy a beach bar. Luckily every time I start thinking like that some kind of irritating well timed event with a moral comes along to shut me up.
To be fair, I don´t feel like I am yet at the point in my training where I could be of much use (I can canulate people... with about a 60% sucess rate) and I would hate to do cynical fake volunteer work for the sake of my CV. But seeing the work they were doing was still enough to make me feel like a massive bastard.
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